Post by jkmiles on Apr 15, 2011 22:50:22 GMT -5
This is my first week on this board. I originally posted this scence/sketch in the Genre homeworld under Urban fantasy but it occured to me that this is really the place to take my ill-formed little brain child for a walk. So my apologies if I'm not supposed to repost.
I started thinking about an idea I had (really a scene rather than a full-fledged idea . . . I seem to only write passionately in scenes . . . I have the hardest time with plots.) At any rate, every good story starts with a what if:
What if, all the things that go bump in the night, vampires, zombies, werewolves etc. didn't exist but their legends were really based on the machinations of a limited number of angelic beings who didn't fall with Satan but also didn't side with God. Doomed to live in flesh and blood (rather than demons who can't abide being incorporeal) and sporting bizarre mutations and supernatural powers, they have created the legends of mankind and ruled from the shadows.
So I began to think about the vampire legend differently, what activities/limitations on angels could give birth to the vampire legend?
Sunlight. What if sunlight is the bane to this creatures because its from a star and as the scripture says, "the morning stars sang" What if instead of singing, now they experience the sound of stars as screeching.
Now about blood. What if they don't HAVE to drink blood but they do have to depend on a parasitic relationship with humans because without "feeding" on the warmth, life of humans they dream of heaven which is excruciating. Blood however gives them a dreamless state so there might be the desire to feed on blood just for the peace it brings. Crosses and holy items make them queasy because of its origin. Any way, that what I have so far.
Below is that "scene" I've talked about. It needs proofreading and I don't have time to do that today so just ignore the grammar and sentence fragments. You will obviously see Jim Butcher's influence. What I will not cop to is stealing from Charlaine Harris. This scene was set in Louisiana long before I ever read any Sookie Stackhouse novels. I'm from the deep South, so I'm just writing where I feel comfortable. Any comments, critiques or plot suggestions would be much appreciated:
Tentative Title: Burning Daylight
There are things that go bump in the night. I should know. I’m one of them. I am a creature of the dark. I feed off the warmth of human kind. I make my life in the hours between dusk and dawn.
It wasn’t always like this. I am—was what most religions call angelos, angel; a being of pure mind, not bound by time or space. I have traveled the breadth of the universe at the speed of thought. I have lit the coldness of space with a flaming sword as long and as sharp as a comet’s tail. I was part of the angelic host that served the divine will as ministers of fire. And then I was expelled from that place and that service. Sent spinning along with untold others from paradise in a fiery trail like so many sparks flying from an anvil.
h
Whether this makes me a fallen angel is open for debate. Usually the term, “fallen angel” is reserved for the cursed, the demonic host led by the prince of the air. I hold no such allegiance. Let me make that clear.
I serve no one.
There was a rebellion within the host. That much I remember. Some sided with the one who would call himself prince of all creation and others sided with the one who called us out of nothing. I did neither. I’m sure of that. I don’t remember the details, only the feeling of ambivalence. I could not, would not get involved. I chose not to take sides.
Then I remember there was something like the sound of a thousand oceans and an intense, soul shattering rage followed by a profound sadness. Then I remember a cold place lit only by luminescent tears and . . . blood . . . I have images of blood dripping off the edge of a cliff and a tree impossibly tall. Metaphors, visions. I honestly don’t know. The next thing I remember, I felt like something picked me up and violently threw me unfathomably far with the sound of stars whizzing past me.
What stopped my fall was earth, hard, cold ground. I found myself trapped in a body of flesh and cut off from the warmth and light of heaven. I was abandoned--left to wander the earth as a thing of flesh and blood but forever reminded that I was--am a thing of spirit who had once sat in the presence of all that is divine. And I was so very, very cold.
My sudden expulsion from the throne left me with only bits and pieces of my memory, jumbled images of what happened before. I don’t know what the rebellion was about. I don’t know who sided with whom. I can tell you nothing about what God is like or heaven. I remember only the intense shift from a world of perfection, a world of complete contentment to this flat, hard, world of aches, pains, and numbing cold.
I, and those like me for there were others, “awoke” with a body that was corporeal—sort of. We did not need to breath air. We did not need to eat or drink or eliminate waste. We were—are, abnormally strong compared to regular mortals.
However, this body still hungered, thirsted, not for food, but for warmth and spirit. We hunger for the evanescent warmth and energy that flowed from mortals. And if we did not have such sustenance, we discovered we could feel both profound fatigue and soul-shattering pain.
We were--are some sort of abomination, aberration. On the outside, by all appearances human or human like, but inside we are beings of pure mind. We remembered what it was like to be spirits of fire. And when our bodies sleep our minds dreamed.
When we first slept, we dreamed of heaven. And it tortured us. Many have said they do not believe in hell. Jean Paul Sartre said hell is other people. Both are wrong. Goethe’s Mephistopheles had it right: When you have been in the presence of the divine will and have basked in the light of God . . . anyplace else is hell. We slept in hell. And each time our bodies demanded that we sleep, our minds dreamed. We woke up in hell. Our waking existence held no purpose, no aging, and no death.
We also discovered that daylight burned. It didn’t burn our flesh like the vampire legends say; instead it burned our minds. We were there when the oldest stars came into being and from their birth they have sung. I don’t remember what the song was, but light from the sun and stars has, for us, always been a thing of sound more than light. Before the foundation of the world, the morning sun sang to us. But now, the morning sun screeches with a cacophony not unlike nails on a chalkboard. Standing in the light of the sun burns and scrambles our minds with a constant noise. We flee from it as others flee from fire.
Only the night is tolerable.
And so we became creatures of the dark. And because we did not die, we became creatures of legend.
We are the shadowy gods of a thousand empires from Mesopotamia to Rome and beyond. We have watched human civilizations spring from the ashes of Eden, grow old and die, only to spawn new cultures. From the shadows, we have founded cities and civilizations that bear our names still: Nineveh, Babylon, Damascus Rome. We have been called men of renown and heroes of old.
We have also murdered with impunity and feed off the very breath of countless mortals. We have gotten drunk off the fear, awe, and worship of countless cultures the way lesser men descend into alcoholic stupor.
Only the ever-present screeching of dawn keeps us from ruling mankind with an iron hand. Our encounters with mortals make up the collective myths, legends, and nightmares of mankind. Yes, we are the inspiration, the foundation for the tales of vampires, ghosts, dark gods, monsters, and all things that go bump in the night.
But that is another story, a long one. A more interesting story is how I wound up the bartender south of New Orleans.
I had been driving all night, slipping down I-55, crossing that imaginary line that divides North and South sometime around midnight. That imaginary line exists somewhere among the string of interstate truck stops and IHOPs, where the waitresses starting serving sweet tea and corn bread comes with your entree.
I got off the interstate around quarter past two a.m. I pulled into the parking lot of one of motels that have “Vacancy” blinking in some absurd color of neon. It was also the kind of motel that didn’t require a reservation and was sure to have someone at the desk even in the wee hours before dawn, mainly because whoever ran the charming little establishment probably lived in one of the rooms close to the front office.
I checked my watch, according to my Blackberry sunrise was in 3 hours. Just enough time to get a room and ride out the day. The Bayou Motel in Hammond Louisiana sat just far enough off the interstate to look shady. There were two pitiful light poles that spilled fluorescent blue in bright circles that somehow made the dark corners of the brick buildings even darker.
There were two or three cars in the parking lot as I drove up and parked near the front office. I opened the trunk and removed my small duffel that held my change of clothes and a large folded bodybag, like the ones the coroners use. I started using one as soon as they were invented. Like the vampire legends I sleep during the day and when I'm zipped up in that bag, its about as dark as you can get.
Meh, beats a coffin.
I found the motel proprietor after following directions carelessly scrawled on cardboard telling me to knock on Room 101 just outside the office. With an apology for the late check-in and an extra twenty dollars, I managed to soothe the sleepy proprietor’s annoyance and secured my room until sundown tomorrow. With key in hand I left him dozing in front of his TV.
My shoes made that weird echoing sound that shoes make in vacant parking lots in bad horror movies. I headed across the pavement to my room that was located just outside the two big circles of bluish light. I spotted a couple of teenagers loitering around one of the light poles. I smiled to myself. They were Goths. All dressed in black and chain and I could bet my ancient eye-teeth that at least one of them had a skull or two either pierced on something or dangling from somewhere. They were laughing and smoking, taking exaggerated drags on what smelled like clove cigarettes.
Even from 50 yards away I could hear that they were discussing the latest horror movie. Two boys stood under the light in stovepipe jeans and white makeup that made it difficult to tell their ages. There was also a girl who seemed to be the keeper of both the clove cigarettes and the lighter. One of the boys was holding forth to the others about how modern movie depictions of vampires were “totally lame”:
“The Nosforatu are not about mindless killing. To be a vampyr, “ He said with emphasis on Old World pronunciation for effect, “To be a vampyr is about freedom and seduction. It’s about the slow kill . . .” He trailed off as he took another drag. The other boy nodded wide eyed. His face couldn’t have shown more awe and fawning if our teenage critic were a university professor giving a lecture on Nietzche. The girl however, saw through all of this. Her eyes didn’t roll up in her head but she positively radiated boredom and condescension.
“Brandon, knock it off. It was just a movie. Save the Ebert and Roeper routine.” She said as she reached for Brandon’s cigarette. They were sharing to save the others.
“Screw you, Diana. These things are important. I keep telling you to live the life you have to know the way things are. You have to live in the mindset. Its what the masquerade is all about.”
I chuckled to myself. The boy Brandon’s use of the term “masquerade” along with all the other erudite commentary meant that Brandon, at least, wasn’t just a Goth, he was a vampire. Brandon played a live action role-playing game that encourages its players to pretend to be vampires. Players indulged in the masquerade. Walking among the normal folks of the world while secretly being a vampire. It is an elaborate live-action game that takes place on weekends and the “playing board” usually ranged over a hotel at a sci-fi convention but could even extend as far as a whole town.
Brandon was a weekend pretend vampire and by the looks and attitude of the other boy, Brandon was trying to recruit a few more players for the game. His geek quotient was very high. The girl was having none of it. She snorted and looked at her feet.
Before Brandon could protest to his protégés, I heard the deep bass resonance of a subwoofer that had to be the size of a small elephant.
From across the parking lot my nostrils picked up the scent of cheap gin and night train. These were footsoldiers, the midlevel muscle of the gang. They didn’t make enough to afford the good stuff. Along with the alcohol drifted the sweet acrid smell of marijuana.
“More trouble for the Goths and their pretend vampire,” I thought.
The soldiers got out of the convertible all muscle and bravado. Goth wannabe boy shrunk down but had just enough stupidity not to bolt. The girl tried real hard to look like the scenery, but Brandon, Brandon didn’t move. He met their gaze with calm determination.
“Stupid boy!” I thought. He hadn’t learned the law of nature. Never stare a predator in the face. It’s a direct challenge to his authority. If he had just played it cool or better run his skinny butt off, he might have avoided their attention. Now, here was a skinny white kid challenging Gangsta disciples of whatever. They saw easy prey and piled out of the vibrating car like jackals.
Brandon was drumming up courage from a deep place that I couldn’t quite sense. It was a bravado and a sureness that began to build within him like chords in a progression. He straightened his shoulders and took one step back, but only one step back. He wasn’t running. He was calmly staring down the predators. Stupid boy.
“What chu doin boy. What do you want, huh. Who you supposed to be? Huh?”
each “huh” was punctuated by the gangster touching or fondling one of Brandon’s many piercings or loose chains.
The other goth boy was looking at his feet and the girl was looking around hoping someone would help. I studied her eyes. I could hear her fear as well, quiet but building.
Don’t Goths like you hang out at the mall? “
Brandon spoke slowly and softly. Even I had a hard time hearing his words. But I could sense his surety, his fear now completely gone. Because I am what I am, I can literally sense people’s emotions most of the time like music or noise but if I concentrate, I can see them like fluorescent auras. Some emotions are quiet and resonating. Others are blaring like a guitar solo at a rock concert. Brandon was building up a crescendo not of fear but pure threatening anger.
What was going on here? What does this kid think he’s doing?
“Gentlemen. I suggest you get back in your car. You are dealing with things far beyond your mortal imagination.” He spoke it crisp with a slight British accent and absolutely no hesitation. The girl twisted her head and dropped her jaw. “Brandon, what are you doing?”
Brandon never looked at her. He kept his eyes on the three predators staring him down. His threat and anger was positively singing now. I could barely hear him speaking. I edged closer.
Countless years living in the dark gives you the ability to slip among the shadows. I edged closer I was no more than ten yards from this drama and I was intrigued. What did this kid know? What was he up to? These guys could break him in half--literally.
I watched the stand off with a curiosity. I didn’t want to be seen. I definitely didn’t want to interfere. As I’ve made abundantly clear, I am not one to take sides. I simply wanted to know what was causing Brandon to be so brave.
I narrowed my eyes, concentrating. Brandon was still speaking low, but getting louder.
The girl was beginning to lose it. Pleading with Brandon quietly to just shut up. The other goth boy was panicking ready to rabbit. The only thing keeping him standing was his intense adulation of Brandon humming around him. Brandon however, was calming. His heart rate actually dropped a bit.
The one called “JT”, the apparent leader of this pack began to laugh and the others took his cue. They snickered and one of them spit his cigarette out. The banger called JT abruptly stopped and spit out the toothpick he had in his mouth.
The blow came quick, incredibly quick. JT punched low and grabbed Brandon by his black jacket and pulled him up to his height in almost the same motion. Brandon took the blow and his courage stuttered with the pain. But I could tell that this wasn’t the first time Brandon had taken a blow like that. In fact, I could sense the tell-tale resonance of the deep resentment and abiding anger of someone who had been punched many, many times. The blow hurt but it had the affect of kicking a cornered dog. When Brandon looked up there wasn’t a single chord of fear or pain. It was swallowed in pure rage.
Then I saw JT’s eyes go wide as Brandon opened his mouth and jutting from both sides of his mouth were
Fangs. Sharp fangs.
He bit into the side of JT’s shoulder and I could hear nothing but JT’s pain mingled with his shock. He howled and hit the ground. His fellow soldiers wild-eyed and scared looked at him in complete consternation. They didn’t know what just happened. Did that boy just bite JT? Did we just see a white boy with fangs?
Brandon stood up with JT’s blood smeared across his face and licked his lips. The other goth boy froze jaws open. Diana, the girl, clinched her fists and said to no one in particular “Oh, God!” One of the soldiers told her to shut up with several expletives for good measure. Brandon just stood there with JT's blood on his face.
I was crouched quietly by a stair well. Suddenly, Soldier number one, a short but stocky youth sporting an oversized Saints jacket and no shirt, turned his head and looked right at me. I swore under my breath. He hadn’t seen me as much as felt me. Instincts of a predator. “You, you get over here!”
The other soldier now clearly getting nervous as there was a witness to all of this. “Aw, Little D, this is getting outta hand man!”
“Shut up, Calvin.”
“Get over here!”
I swore again and stepped out of the shadows.
I walked as calmly as I could into the light.
Little D’s eyes narrowed but he kept the gun on me turned sideways like a hundred gang members in a hundred movies. Calvin just shuffled from foot to foot. JT was getting back up still more in shock than in pain. He wiped two blood trails from his neck. The girl, Diana looked at me. Hoping someone, anyone could stop this insanity.
“You can’t harm me with that thing. I am a creature of the night” and Brandon bared his fangs again. Diana began to yell, “Brandon, cut it out! Are you crazy.” I looked at her in the glaring light for the first time.
She was small but delicate. The white make-up made her look like a porcelain figurine, like the kind from imperial China. A thing of beauty wrapped in the impetuous trappings of youth. There was more. I could hear tinkling around her the high-pitched chimes of what in another century would have been called “moxie” or guts. That unmistakable strength of a woman who just hadn’t quite made it past being a girl.
Underneath the goth makeup, the black nail polish, and the eyeliner was a work of art. A soul strong, clear, and most of all full of life. Our eyes met. She pleaded with me desperately hoping I could do something to save her friend. I looked at Brandon more closely as Little D continued to posture.
The fangs were real. I wondered where the boy got the cash to have them surgically implanted. Brandon truly thought he was a vampire. Somewhere in the hours and hours of role-playing games that he played out on the weekends, Brandon began to believe he was one of the creatures of the night. That was the source of his courage. Combined with his pent up rage that I guessed had its source in some parental abuse, Brandon had created an iron clad delusion. He had the fangs but he wasn’t a vampire. Because vampires don't exist. But I do.
I may not be, strickly speaking, human; but I do feel pain and I am not bullet proof. My other problem was that it was getting closer to dawn. I glanced at my watch. Sunrise was at 5:30 AM. That didn’t leave me much time. That meant it had to end soon. I looked at the girl trying to catch her gaze. She was the best candidate to give me permission. Brandon was out of it, caught up in his delusion. Goth boy looked like he was about to wet his pants. That left Diana. Brandon was right about one thing, feeding off the life of another isn’t an act of violence.
It is an act of seduction.
My kind cannot simply take the life-force of someone, there must be a connection between minds. That connection can be forged in several ways from the throes of passion to the intense bond of damsel in distress and her would be rescuer.
I caught her eyes and said, “Diana. Do you want me to help you?
I looked at my watch again.
I ignored him. I focused on Diana. “Diana, look at me. Do you want me to help you and Brandon?” I added Brandon to the equation to tap into Diana’s genuine bond for Brandon. The concern for a friend can strengthen the bond.
Diana looked confused probably wondering how I knew her name. But she was scared and confused. She nodded. I felt her consent. Like a rich wave of energy drawing me into her eyes. It had been so long.
I drank her in like a man dying of thirst. She filled me cool and tingly, her fear, her worry, and most of all that tinkling chime of inner strength. I heard her say yes. And I was flooded not only with strength but a barrage of her memories, hopes and dreams. It was intoxicating. I felt light headed. I can go days, even weeks without really feeding and if need be there is always blood. It took a great deal of effort not to drain her dry.
A work of Art.
Then I saw Calvin hit her across the face with the side of cheap gun. I didn’t know Diana and had no feelings for her personally. But it was like Calvin had just stomped on a Ming vase or slashed a Van Gogh. Some things are just unacceptable. I turned on JT, Little D and Calvin.
That’s when the fluorescent light spilling over the parking lot sputtered out.
I started thinking about an idea I had (really a scene rather than a full-fledged idea . . . I seem to only write passionately in scenes . . . I have the hardest time with plots.) At any rate, every good story starts with a what if:
What if, all the things that go bump in the night, vampires, zombies, werewolves etc. didn't exist but their legends were really based on the machinations of a limited number of angelic beings who didn't fall with Satan but also didn't side with God. Doomed to live in flesh and blood (rather than demons who can't abide being incorporeal) and sporting bizarre mutations and supernatural powers, they have created the legends of mankind and ruled from the shadows.
So I began to think about the vampire legend differently, what activities/limitations on angels could give birth to the vampire legend?
Sunlight. What if sunlight is the bane to this creatures because its from a star and as the scripture says, "the morning stars sang" What if instead of singing, now they experience the sound of stars as screeching.
Now about blood. What if they don't HAVE to drink blood but they do have to depend on a parasitic relationship with humans because without "feeding" on the warmth, life of humans they dream of heaven which is excruciating. Blood however gives them a dreamless state so there might be the desire to feed on blood just for the peace it brings. Crosses and holy items make them queasy because of its origin. Any way, that what I have so far.
Below is that "scene" I've talked about. It needs proofreading and I don't have time to do that today so just ignore the grammar and sentence fragments. You will obviously see Jim Butcher's influence. What I will not cop to is stealing from Charlaine Harris. This scene was set in Louisiana long before I ever read any Sookie Stackhouse novels. I'm from the deep South, so I'm just writing where I feel comfortable. Any comments, critiques or plot suggestions would be much appreciated:
Tentative Title: Burning Daylight
There are things that go bump in the night. I should know. I’m one of them. I am a creature of the dark. I feed off the warmth of human kind. I make my life in the hours between dusk and dawn.
It wasn’t always like this. I am—was what most religions call angelos, angel; a being of pure mind, not bound by time or space. I have traveled the breadth of the universe at the speed of thought. I have lit the coldness of space with a flaming sword as long and as sharp as a comet’s tail. I was part of the angelic host that served the divine will as ministers of fire. And then I was expelled from that place and that service. Sent spinning along with untold others from paradise in a fiery trail like so many sparks flying from an anvil.
h
Whether this makes me a fallen angel is open for debate. Usually the term, “fallen angel” is reserved for the cursed, the demonic host led by the prince of the air. I hold no such allegiance. Let me make that clear.
I serve no one.
There was a rebellion within the host. That much I remember. Some sided with the one who would call himself prince of all creation and others sided with the one who called us out of nothing. I did neither. I’m sure of that. I don’t remember the details, only the feeling of ambivalence. I could not, would not get involved. I chose not to take sides.
Then I remember there was something like the sound of a thousand oceans and an intense, soul shattering rage followed by a profound sadness. Then I remember a cold place lit only by luminescent tears and . . . blood . . . I have images of blood dripping off the edge of a cliff and a tree impossibly tall. Metaphors, visions. I honestly don’t know. The next thing I remember, I felt like something picked me up and violently threw me unfathomably far with the sound of stars whizzing past me.
What stopped my fall was earth, hard, cold ground. I found myself trapped in a body of flesh and cut off from the warmth and light of heaven. I was abandoned--left to wander the earth as a thing of flesh and blood but forever reminded that I was--am a thing of spirit who had once sat in the presence of all that is divine. And I was so very, very cold.
My sudden expulsion from the throne left me with only bits and pieces of my memory, jumbled images of what happened before. I don’t know what the rebellion was about. I don’t know who sided with whom. I can tell you nothing about what God is like or heaven. I remember only the intense shift from a world of perfection, a world of complete contentment to this flat, hard, world of aches, pains, and numbing cold.
I, and those like me for there were others, “awoke” with a body that was corporeal—sort of. We did not need to breath air. We did not need to eat or drink or eliminate waste. We were—are, abnormally strong compared to regular mortals.
However, this body still hungered, thirsted, not for food, but for warmth and spirit. We hunger for the evanescent warmth and energy that flowed from mortals. And if we did not have such sustenance, we discovered we could feel both profound fatigue and soul-shattering pain.
We were--are some sort of abomination, aberration. On the outside, by all appearances human or human like, but inside we are beings of pure mind. We remembered what it was like to be spirits of fire. And when our bodies sleep our minds dreamed.
When we first slept, we dreamed of heaven. And it tortured us. Many have said they do not believe in hell. Jean Paul Sartre said hell is other people. Both are wrong. Goethe’s Mephistopheles had it right: When you have been in the presence of the divine will and have basked in the light of God . . . anyplace else is hell. We slept in hell. And each time our bodies demanded that we sleep, our minds dreamed. We woke up in hell. Our waking existence held no purpose, no aging, and no death.
We also discovered that daylight burned. It didn’t burn our flesh like the vampire legends say; instead it burned our minds. We were there when the oldest stars came into being and from their birth they have sung. I don’t remember what the song was, but light from the sun and stars has, for us, always been a thing of sound more than light. Before the foundation of the world, the morning sun sang to us. But now, the morning sun screeches with a cacophony not unlike nails on a chalkboard. Standing in the light of the sun burns and scrambles our minds with a constant noise. We flee from it as others flee from fire.
Only the night is tolerable.
And so we became creatures of the dark. And because we did not die, we became creatures of legend.
We are the shadowy gods of a thousand empires from Mesopotamia to Rome and beyond. We have watched human civilizations spring from the ashes of Eden, grow old and die, only to spawn new cultures. From the shadows, we have founded cities and civilizations that bear our names still: Nineveh, Babylon, Damascus Rome. We have been called men of renown and heroes of old.
We have also murdered with impunity and feed off the very breath of countless mortals. We have gotten drunk off the fear, awe, and worship of countless cultures the way lesser men descend into alcoholic stupor.
Only the ever-present screeching of dawn keeps us from ruling mankind with an iron hand. Our encounters with mortals make up the collective myths, legends, and nightmares of mankind. Yes, we are the inspiration, the foundation for the tales of vampires, ghosts, dark gods, monsters, and all things that go bump in the night.
But that is another story, a long one. A more interesting story is how I wound up the bartender south of New Orleans.
I had been driving all night, slipping down I-55, crossing that imaginary line that divides North and South sometime around midnight. That imaginary line exists somewhere among the string of interstate truck stops and IHOPs, where the waitresses starting serving sweet tea and corn bread comes with your entree.
I got off the interstate around quarter past two a.m. I pulled into the parking lot of one of motels that have “Vacancy” blinking in some absurd color of neon. It was also the kind of motel that didn’t require a reservation and was sure to have someone at the desk even in the wee hours before dawn, mainly because whoever ran the charming little establishment probably lived in one of the rooms close to the front office.
I checked my watch, according to my Blackberry sunrise was in 3 hours. Just enough time to get a room and ride out the day. The Bayou Motel in Hammond Louisiana sat just far enough off the interstate to look shady. There were two pitiful light poles that spilled fluorescent blue in bright circles that somehow made the dark corners of the brick buildings even darker.
There were two or three cars in the parking lot as I drove up and parked near the front office. I opened the trunk and removed my small duffel that held my change of clothes and a large folded bodybag, like the ones the coroners use. I started using one as soon as they were invented. Like the vampire legends I sleep during the day and when I'm zipped up in that bag, its about as dark as you can get.
Meh, beats a coffin.
I found the motel proprietor after following directions carelessly scrawled on cardboard telling me to knock on Room 101 just outside the office. With an apology for the late check-in and an extra twenty dollars, I managed to soothe the sleepy proprietor’s annoyance and secured my room until sundown tomorrow. With key in hand I left him dozing in front of his TV.
My shoes made that weird echoing sound that shoes make in vacant parking lots in bad horror movies. I headed across the pavement to my room that was located just outside the two big circles of bluish light. I spotted a couple of teenagers loitering around one of the light poles. I smiled to myself. They were Goths. All dressed in black and chain and I could bet my ancient eye-teeth that at least one of them had a skull or two either pierced on something or dangling from somewhere. They were laughing and smoking, taking exaggerated drags on what smelled like clove cigarettes.
Even from 50 yards away I could hear that they were discussing the latest horror movie. Two boys stood under the light in stovepipe jeans and white makeup that made it difficult to tell their ages. There was also a girl who seemed to be the keeper of both the clove cigarettes and the lighter. One of the boys was holding forth to the others about how modern movie depictions of vampires were “totally lame”:
“The Nosforatu are not about mindless killing. To be a vampyr, “ He said with emphasis on Old World pronunciation for effect, “To be a vampyr is about freedom and seduction. It’s about the slow kill . . .” He trailed off as he took another drag. The other boy nodded wide eyed. His face couldn’t have shown more awe and fawning if our teenage critic were a university professor giving a lecture on Nietzche. The girl however, saw through all of this. Her eyes didn’t roll up in her head but she positively radiated boredom and condescension.
“Brandon, knock it off. It was just a movie. Save the Ebert and Roeper routine.” She said as she reached for Brandon’s cigarette. They were sharing to save the others.
“Screw you, Diana. These things are important. I keep telling you to live the life you have to know the way things are. You have to live in the mindset. Its what the masquerade is all about.”
I chuckled to myself. The boy Brandon’s use of the term “masquerade” along with all the other erudite commentary meant that Brandon, at least, wasn’t just a Goth, he was a vampire. Brandon played a live action role-playing game that encourages its players to pretend to be vampires. Players indulged in the masquerade. Walking among the normal folks of the world while secretly being a vampire. It is an elaborate live-action game that takes place on weekends and the “playing board” usually ranged over a hotel at a sci-fi convention but could even extend as far as a whole town.
Brandon was a weekend pretend vampire and by the looks and attitude of the other boy, Brandon was trying to recruit a few more players for the game. His geek quotient was very high. The girl was having none of it. She snorted and looked at her feet.
Before Brandon could protest to his protégés, I heard the deep bass resonance of a subwoofer that had to be the size of a small elephant.
From across the parking lot my nostrils picked up the scent of cheap gin and night train. These were footsoldiers, the midlevel muscle of the gang. They didn’t make enough to afford the good stuff. Along with the alcohol drifted the sweet acrid smell of marijuana.
“More trouble for the Goths and their pretend vampire,” I thought.
The soldiers got out of the convertible all muscle and bravado. Goth wannabe boy shrunk down but had just enough stupidity not to bolt. The girl tried real hard to look like the scenery, but Brandon, Brandon didn’t move. He met their gaze with calm determination.
“Stupid boy!” I thought. He hadn’t learned the law of nature. Never stare a predator in the face. It’s a direct challenge to his authority. If he had just played it cool or better run his skinny butt off, he might have avoided their attention. Now, here was a skinny white kid challenging Gangsta disciples of whatever. They saw easy prey and piled out of the vibrating car like jackals.
Brandon was drumming up courage from a deep place that I couldn’t quite sense. It was a bravado and a sureness that began to build within him like chords in a progression. He straightened his shoulders and took one step back, but only one step back. He wasn’t running. He was calmly staring down the predators. Stupid boy.
“What chu doin boy. What do you want, huh. Who you supposed to be? Huh?”
each “huh” was punctuated by the gangster touching or fondling one of Brandon’s many piercings or loose chains.
The other goth boy was looking at his feet and the girl was looking around hoping someone would help. I studied her eyes. I could hear her fear as well, quiet but building.
Don’t Goths like you hang out at the mall? “
Brandon spoke slowly and softly. Even I had a hard time hearing his words. But I could sense his surety, his fear now completely gone. Because I am what I am, I can literally sense people’s emotions most of the time like music or noise but if I concentrate, I can see them like fluorescent auras. Some emotions are quiet and resonating. Others are blaring like a guitar solo at a rock concert. Brandon was building up a crescendo not of fear but pure threatening anger.
What was going on here? What does this kid think he’s doing?
“Gentlemen. I suggest you get back in your car. You are dealing with things far beyond your mortal imagination.” He spoke it crisp with a slight British accent and absolutely no hesitation. The girl twisted her head and dropped her jaw. “Brandon, what are you doing?”
Brandon never looked at her. He kept his eyes on the three predators staring him down. His threat and anger was positively singing now. I could barely hear him speaking. I edged closer.
Countless years living in the dark gives you the ability to slip among the shadows. I edged closer I was no more than ten yards from this drama and I was intrigued. What did this kid know? What was he up to? These guys could break him in half--literally.
I watched the stand off with a curiosity. I didn’t want to be seen. I definitely didn’t want to interfere. As I’ve made abundantly clear, I am not one to take sides. I simply wanted to know what was causing Brandon to be so brave.
I narrowed my eyes, concentrating. Brandon was still speaking low, but getting louder.
The girl was beginning to lose it. Pleading with Brandon quietly to just shut up. The other goth boy was panicking ready to rabbit. The only thing keeping him standing was his intense adulation of Brandon humming around him. Brandon however, was calming. His heart rate actually dropped a bit.
The one called “JT”, the apparent leader of this pack began to laugh and the others took his cue. They snickered and one of them spit his cigarette out. The banger called JT abruptly stopped and spit out the toothpick he had in his mouth.
The blow came quick, incredibly quick. JT punched low and grabbed Brandon by his black jacket and pulled him up to his height in almost the same motion. Brandon took the blow and his courage stuttered with the pain. But I could tell that this wasn’t the first time Brandon had taken a blow like that. In fact, I could sense the tell-tale resonance of the deep resentment and abiding anger of someone who had been punched many, many times. The blow hurt but it had the affect of kicking a cornered dog. When Brandon looked up there wasn’t a single chord of fear or pain. It was swallowed in pure rage.
Then I saw JT’s eyes go wide as Brandon opened his mouth and jutting from both sides of his mouth were
Fangs. Sharp fangs.
He bit into the side of JT’s shoulder and I could hear nothing but JT’s pain mingled with his shock. He howled and hit the ground. His fellow soldiers wild-eyed and scared looked at him in complete consternation. They didn’t know what just happened. Did that boy just bite JT? Did we just see a white boy with fangs?
Brandon stood up with JT’s blood smeared across his face and licked his lips. The other goth boy froze jaws open. Diana, the girl, clinched her fists and said to no one in particular “Oh, God!” One of the soldiers told her to shut up with several expletives for good measure. Brandon just stood there with JT's blood on his face.
I was crouched quietly by a stair well. Suddenly, Soldier number one, a short but stocky youth sporting an oversized Saints jacket and no shirt, turned his head and looked right at me. I swore under my breath. He hadn’t seen me as much as felt me. Instincts of a predator. “You, you get over here!”
The other soldier now clearly getting nervous as there was a witness to all of this. “Aw, Little D, this is getting outta hand man!”
“Shut up, Calvin.”
“Get over here!”
I swore again and stepped out of the shadows.
I walked as calmly as I could into the light.
Little D’s eyes narrowed but he kept the gun on me turned sideways like a hundred gang members in a hundred movies. Calvin just shuffled from foot to foot. JT was getting back up still more in shock than in pain. He wiped two blood trails from his neck. The girl, Diana looked at me. Hoping someone, anyone could stop this insanity.
“You can’t harm me with that thing. I am a creature of the night” and Brandon bared his fangs again. Diana began to yell, “Brandon, cut it out! Are you crazy.” I looked at her in the glaring light for the first time.
She was small but delicate. The white make-up made her look like a porcelain figurine, like the kind from imperial China. A thing of beauty wrapped in the impetuous trappings of youth. There was more. I could hear tinkling around her the high-pitched chimes of what in another century would have been called “moxie” or guts. That unmistakable strength of a woman who just hadn’t quite made it past being a girl.
Underneath the goth makeup, the black nail polish, and the eyeliner was a work of art. A soul strong, clear, and most of all full of life. Our eyes met. She pleaded with me desperately hoping I could do something to save her friend. I looked at Brandon more closely as Little D continued to posture.
The fangs were real. I wondered where the boy got the cash to have them surgically implanted. Brandon truly thought he was a vampire. Somewhere in the hours and hours of role-playing games that he played out on the weekends, Brandon began to believe he was one of the creatures of the night. That was the source of his courage. Combined with his pent up rage that I guessed had its source in some parental abuse, Brandon had created an iron clad delusion. He had the fangs but he wasn’t a vampire. Because vampires don't exist. But I do.
I may not be, strickly speaking, human; but I do feel pain and I am not bullet proof. My other problem was that it was getting closer to dawn. I glanced at my watch. Sunrise was at 5:30 AM. That didn’t leave me much time. That meant it had to end soon. I looked at the girl trying to catch her gaze. She was the best candidate to give me permission. Brandon was out of it, caught up in his delusion. Goth boy looked like he was about to wet his pants. That left Diana. Brandon was right about one thing, feeding off the life of another isn’t an act of violence.
It is an act of seduction.
My kind cannot simply take the life-force of someone, there must be a connection between minds. That connection can be forged in several ways from the throes of passion to the intense bond of damsel in distress and her would be rescuer.
I caught her eyes and said, “Diana. Do you want me to help you?
I looked at my watch again.
I ignored him. I focused on Diana. “Diana, look at me. Do you want me to help you and Brandon?” I added Brandon to the equation to tap into Diana’s genuine bond for Brandon. The concern for a friend can strengthen the bond.
Diana looked confused probably wondering how I knew her name. But she was scared and confused. She nodded. I felt her consent. Like a rich wave of energy drawing me into her eyes. It had been so long.
I drank her in like a man dying of thirst. She filled me cool and tingly, her fear, her worry, and most of all that tinkling chime of inner strength. I heard her say yes. And I was flooded not only with strength but a barrage of her memories, hopes and dreams. It was intoxicating. I felt light headed. I can go days, even weeks without really feeding and if need be there is always blood. It took a great deal of effort not to drain her dry.
A work of Art.
Then I saw Calvin hit her across the face with the side of cheap gun. I didn’t know Diana and had no feelings for her personally. But it was like Calvin had just stomped on a Ming vase or slashed a Van Gogh. Some things are just unacceptable. I turned on JT, Little D and Calvin.
That’s when the fluorescent light spilling over the parking lot sputtered out.